Have you considered how long it would take the 1% families to achieve meaningful growth relative to population sizes even if every woman has 15 children starting at age 18? On the flip side, have you considered how hard it is to get poor people to stop getting pregnant? What would the incentives look like?
Redistribution is just a way of punishing smart and hardworking people for their success and reward the rest of society for their laziness. This would surely end in a disaster: people loose motivation to do anything, because they cannot see any correlation between their effort and income. This is also known as "learned helplessness" and will occur in most of middle class people.
Also, nothing depraves people more that money got without effort.
And many of world's greatest fortunes were and are created by stealing and other equally immoral practices. Your apparent ideology that government taxation is inherently evil, and capitalist markets are inherently good is incredibly naïve.
Capitalist markets are good because they allow people to have a vote in everything that concerns them. But instead of putting their vote in a ballot box they vote with their money, which has much more power.
If you can point to even one single state that has successfully done so, it would be of immense help to this discussion.
> But instead of putting their vote in a ballot box they vote with their money, which has much more power.
This way you reintroduce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage#Census_suffrage.
http://www.heritage.org/index/ will be helpfull
> This way you reintroduce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage#Census_suffrage.
Yes, and that's the point, because it immediately cures main deficency of the democracy: decisions about country's major issuess would be made by people who are smart, successfull and have experience leading big organizations or companies, instead of being made by every idiot that happens to be of the legal age.
You then confuse financial success with competence or intelligence. Also, keep in mind those "idiots" will have to obey their "smart, successful" rulers without right to question their rule. They are also in much larger number and may resent that. How do you intend to oppress them?
I stated from the beginning that I consider ruling out any possibility of stealing and cheating to be prerequisite for existence of the capitalism. Given that,the only remaining ways to become rich are to be competent and intelligent.
> Also, keep in mind those "idiots" will have to obey their "smart, successful" rulers without right to question their rule. They are also in much larger number and may resent that. How do you intend to oppress them?
Funny thing is that they do not need to be oppressed at all. Most people are just mentally incapable of questioning rules that were imposed on them, they are totally happy with explanations like "it has always been like that. It has to be like that". They even like being told what to do because it is easier and gives them sense of security.
And those few who are brave enough to question rules are welcomed to be successful, earn a lot of money and join the class of "rulers".
Moreover, provided that the "rulers" are really intelligent they will know how much they can push their minions without causing resentment. This is basically how US politics works these days :)
Inheritance is another possibility. Do you intend to rule that out too? And, again, if the "smart, successful" are the ones making the rules, you can bet none of them will ever be caught cheating.
> Most people are just mentally incapable of questioning rules that were imposed on them
> Moreover, provided that the "rulers" are really intelligent they will know how much they can push their minions without causing resentment.
Sigh...
1. Poverty is a relative term. Giving the entire population a basic income would shift everyone up, but ultimately it's a zero sum game. Obviously, the additional income will be marginal for high earners and the income gap will largely remain.
2. Massive distribution of money tends to be inflationary. As purchasing power and demand go up, so does the market pricing. Think of rent prices around poor neighborhoods for example.
3. It will not mitigate the "reverse Darwinism" that occurs across the socioeconomic layers. High earners have neutral or negative population growth, while the poor are procreating at a much higher rate. This phenomena crosses communities, countries and continents. It's the reason some rich European countries have declining indigenous population, with any growth attributed to poor immigrants.
4. It reduces the incentive to adapt to the new employment situation.
5. It does nothing to curb to social unrest that will happen due to income gaps. I don't want to sound like "The Man", but in effect this has the potential to make the income gap much more volatile; a large portion of the population that's idle and feels neglected is a massive unrest waiting for a cause.
The talks of automation as if it's the end of the materialistic society - as everything is produced effortlessly and cost effectively - are premature. We'll be there when we ultimately master the matter at a particle level (think of the Culture novels). Society can, and will adapt to the added manufacturing capabilities with strong demand for better products and services. In fact, I think automation will be the saving grace of manufacturing in the first world nations.
As controversial as it sounds, I think the solution lies in balancing the growth across the different socioeconomic levels. There should be a policy of encouraging growth across the upper echelons of society, while discouraging the growth among the lower ranks:
1. Immediately, it will reduce poverty levels;
2. It will provide a better opportunity to take care of low income families, including government sponsored education, health and food programs;
3. In the long run, it will be the most effective redistribution tool of wealth. For every kid the Walton family had, each of the others had billions less in inheritance. Accumulation of individual wealth is greatly amplified when successful families make 1 or 2 children. If they have an average of 4 children, the transfer of wealth between and across generations will be more reasonable.
The current situation of the financially weakest population multiplying in the quickest rate is bad for everyone (first and foremost to themselves); it is a demographic and economic dead end. No matter how much you try patching it with wealth redistribution, you WILL eventually "run out of other people's money".